very essence of the book. What the author wishes us to give our earnest attention to is the Gospel of Virginity and Poverty and its effect upon the soul. As to the intense seriousness of the book there can be no doubt at all: no early Christian writer, orthodox or heterodox, would quote the Lord's Prayer in full merely for ornament.
It will be noticed even from this short summary that the Acts of Thomas form a work complete in itself. From the moment that St Thomas starts for India we hear no more of the other Apostles. He is absolutely independent of every one except his Lord. The word Church occurs only once and that by mistake[1]. Moreover the whole framework of the tale is Eastern, and Eastern of a very decided type. The proper names are such as would occur to a Syriac-speaking Christian, but they could hardly have been invented by a Greek. It is to Justi's Iranisches Namenbuch not to Pape's Griechische Eigennamen that we have to look for their
- ↑ The first word of the Hymn in the first Act: the Greek has ἡ κόρη.
